The Panther
by bijou2009
Summary: This is a bit bleak. An excerpt of something that might have happened, in the pilot episode, in the period between when Neal was caught again and when Peter picked him up outside the prison.


A/N Just an excerpt of something that might have happened in the pilot episode in the period between when Neal was caught again and when Peter picked him up outside the prison.

Because there is no way, come hell or high tide, that Neal would have been placed back in the same cell that he escaped from. In the U.S. Prison-system, escape attempts are routinely punished with solitary, sometimes for years on end.

There's a reason the UN and Amnesty International, among others, classifies solitary confinement as torture.

* * *

 **The Panter**

(*)

When they come for him, he has long since lost count of the days or any sense of time.

(*)

Down in the Tombs, hope is a scarce commodity, it slips through Neals fingers like fine sand in a dessert, leaving a gritty, parched feeling behind.

(*)

 _Der Panther_

Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

 _Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe  
so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.  
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe  
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt._

 _(*)_

 _His vision, from the constantly passing bars,_ _  
_ _has grown so weary, it can hold no more._ _  
_ _To him, there seem to be a thousand bars_ _  
_ _and behind those thousand bars, no world._

(*)

He tries as best he can to keep sane, he exercises, quote poems out loud to himself, anything to give the days some substance and meaning, to stave off the never-ending grey sameness that threatens to swallow him whole.

But he knows it's a loosing prospect from the moment the panther starts to keep him company as he paces, back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the cell to another.

He knows the panther isn't real, a hallucination, but it doesn't really matter, it's company, someone to talk to. It takes a while before he realizes that he speaks to it in halting German, but on further reflection it makes complete sense, if it's a figment of his imagination, why shouldn't the Panther be German, he names it Rilke.

(****)

 _Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille  
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,  
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -  
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein._

 _(*)_

 _As he paces in cramped circles, over and over_

 _the soft the supple step and sturdy pace,_ _  
_ _moves like a dance of strength around a core_ _  
_ _in which a mighty will stands paralysed._

(****)

After the first time the panther shows up, Rilke is always there in the corner of his eye, but when he tries to look directly at the panther, it disappears.

The only times the panther isn't there, is when the hacks come to put him in leg irons, waist chain and cuffs for his airing in the "box". The box is what functions as a yard in , where he for one hour, five days a week, can feel the air and high up between the concrete walls, through a latticework of bars, he can see the sky.

"Kneel.", "Place your feet here." and "Hold out your hands." the Guards asks by rote as they put on the chains, that's the only times he is touched or hears a voice other than his own.

The dispassionate automatic way they act only contributes to his feeling of desolation, like he isn't real, he isn't a person to them.

Sometimes on the way to the "box", just to feel a human touch, he will slow down and the guard will give him a little push on the shoulder to hurry him along.

In the beginning he tries to engage with the Guards, as they escort him or when the food is delivered through the hatch in the solid steel door.

He just wants some sort of connection, to make them see him as a person, a human and for him to see the Guards as something more than automates set on making him as miserable as possible, only to be met with stony stares and icy silence.

The cold bleak greyness of his surroundings slowly seeps into his limbs and soul, there is nothing for him to hold onto, to anchor himself to reality with. He isn't afforded any of the privileges that is possible to earn down here in the Tombs, like extra blankets, reading or writing material, a radio or TV.

He guesses that the BoP(Bureau of Prison) didn't really appreciate the fact that he managed to walk out of a High-Security Prison in broad daylight.

Sometimes he has difficulty breathing and breaks out in cold sweat at the thought that he might spend rest of his sentence here, he suspects they might be panic attacks but is difficult to know when he has nothing to measure himself against.

(***)

 _Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille  
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,  
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -  
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein_

 _(*)_

 _Only at times, does the curtain of the pupils  
lift soundlessly — An image enters in,  
rushes down through the tensed, arrested limbs,  
plunges into the heart and is gone._

(***)

When they come for him, he has long since lost count of the days or any sense of time.

(*)

They march him down the corridors, they won't tell him what's happening or where they're going. He's deposited in a small room with a metal chair and table, there's a folder on the table, which he's told to read and sign.

Neal stands frozen for what seems a long time before he edges closer to the table, he's unexpectedly afraid, he doesn't know what this break in the routine means, he knows there isn't any danger in the room but he can still feel how his heart is palpitating.

He just hopes nothing shows on the outside, he can feel the guards watching.

Neal slowly sits down at the rickety metal chair, only to realize that to open the folder he needs to stand up and bend over the table in order to flip it open, he is sill wearing his shackles and chains.

The words in the document swim in and out of focus, it's difficult to concentrate, but slowly he realizes that it's a contract for work release with the FBI.

That couldn't be right, he had known it was a long shot back then, he hadn't really been surprised when Agent Burke had laughingly dismissed him with a "Nice try Neal".

Could this be real, has Burke changed his mind and decided to take the deal?

As a small kernel of hope lights up in Neal's heart, he signs the papers with a shaking hand and sits down to wait for what comes next.

(*)

He never sees Rilke again, outside his cell in , but he can't help but feel, as he steps into the world and flashes his anklet for Peter, that he has lost a part of himself that he won't get back, down there, in the isolation cells in the tombs.  
(*)

* * *

Notes:

The Poem was written in 1902 in Paris by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.


End file.
